They have no fires for cooking, and they do not beg for
petrol. Money is of little use to them, because there is no food to be
bought with money.
Belgium under ordinary circumstances imports five-sixths of the food she
eats. The ordinary channels of sale and purchase are closed. They
cannot buy and sell if they would. Representatives of Belgian
communities told me at Maastricht yesterday that the crops were taken
from their fields--the wheat and potatoes--and were sent into Germany.
No Work, but Taxes Continue.
There is no work. The factories are closed because they have not raw
material, coal, or petrol, because they have no markets.
And yet war taxes are falling with hideous pressure upon a people whose
hands are empty, whose workshops are closed, whose fields are idle,
whose cattle have been taken, or compulsorily purchased without value
received.
In Belgium itself the misery of the populace is greater than the misery
of the Belgian fugitives in other countries, such as Holland, where
there have come since the fall of Liege one and a half million of
fugitives. To gauge what that misery in Belgium is, think of what even
the fugitives suffer.
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